"Tell me, Sir Evandre. Where does your loyalty lie? To Damian himself...or the throne?"
-Rosanna Castus to Vincent Evandre; Secret Route
***
The morning after Rosanna's capture, Leo had a very 'serious' talk with the Crown Prince.
He had dropped by in front of Leo's quarter, uninvited, with his knight in tow. The Crown Prince made no mention of his purpose nor bother with greetings, and instead stepped inside Leo's room like it was already his.
Never mind that it was already lights out and students are extremely prohibited to wander around the premises late at night. Never mind that this His Highness was dressed in suspicious black clothing; which can easily mark him as an intruder or a particularly gutsy eloper. Anyone who saw them could easily jump to the worst conclusion and spread new rumors.
"Pardon me, Your Highness, but this is a bit unsafe—"
"Vince will take care of it," His Highness threw a wink at his royal guard, who immediately stopped by the door.
"But Your highness—"
"I said," Damian sing-songed from the inside, "Vince will take care of it. Right, Vince?"
Vincent threw one last look at Leo — damn him — before bowing his head.
"Understood, Your Highness."
The knight closed the door, leaving Leo alone with the spoiled royalty. Moments like these with the Crown Prince weren't at all strange, but every time Damian sought Leo's counsel instead of Viola's, it only ever meant trouble for the both of them.
Leo wasn't exactly supposed to help his rival out, but what can he do when the man held the empire in the palm of his hand?
"You do realize that revealing my identity to strangers can be considered treason," The Crown Prince said lightly like he was simply announcing the weather.
"Then consider me a dead man, Your Highness," Leo deadpanned. Technically, Leo WAS a dead man ten times over. Threats like these don't scare him.
But His Highness didn't know that, so Leo could at least bite back another sarcastic remark.
"It's unlike you to be friends with anyone else other than Lady Viola," the Crown Prince started, plopping himself on Leo's bed. He spread out his arms like a starfish. "I almost killed her, you know."
Leo put a hand on his temple, already feeling the beginnings of a migraine. "You shouldn't say things you don't mean, Your Highness." 'Especially if you're going to end up marrying her, anyway,' he thought. "And please take off your boots before getting on my bed."
"But it's true!" His Highness shot up, his purple eyes wide. He didn't seem to hear the last part of what Leo had just said. "She knew so much about me! How much did you tell her, even? I never told any of you about my singing. Or my baking. Or my life back home. Heavens, she even knew about my birth chart!"
It was Leo's turn to splutter. "She said WHAT?"
Looking at his expression, the Crown Prince pouted, before pulling Leo's cover close to his face. "At this point, it's really either Miss Castus is terribly delusional or surprisingly good at guesses. I wouldn't have had her captured if her words didn't hold a kernel of truth."
The voice of the old Rosanna played in Leo's head like the haunting of a ghost:
'You owe me, Leonardo Cassius. You have no idea how much.'
A chill went down Leo's spine. Slowly but surely, another possibility began to form: could it have been that this was the same Rosanna from that lifetime?
"But Your Highness," Leo reasoned, "There's no way someone of her stature could possibly have gotten near you. The Castuses have been declared persona non grata from the capital city. Plus, I've never even been inside the Imperial Palace…"
"I know," the Crown Prince sighed. "I considered that. It may be possible that my first two guesses are correct. However…"
The Crown Prince removed his covers, shifting his gaze at the ceiling.
"I looked into Miss Rosanna's parents. Her mother, Elizabeth Castus, seemed to have been quite the famed scholar during her time. She was actually good friends with the headmaster of this Academy, Horace Pryor. She even made him the godfather of her children."
And with that, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Rosanna's confidence, her admittance despite the failing marks, and how Rosanna Castus should've scored the highest, if she had turned in her own paper — all of it suddenly made sense. No wonder Rosanna was so confident. With the support of the Headmaster himself, Rosanna could kill a student and nobody would know.
That also explained how Rosanna was absolved so many times in their previous lives. All this time she had more than paramours watching her back; to think she even had the Headmaster doing her bidding!
But he couldn't say all of this to the Crown Prince - not without the risk of revealing himself. Rosanna had made it so that Leo would go down with her if ever her secrets are revealed, which meant that asking him to be her friend was no more than formalities' sake — she had a noose wrapped around his neck from the very start.
Nothing less from the empire's black rose, Leo thought begrudgingly. It was an old nickname that the previous incarnation of Rosanna Castus held as the ruling empress — a black rose for a blackened heart.
"What does that have to do with anything, though, Your Highness?" Leo feigned innocence. Perhaps this way, he can use the Crown Prince to fill in the gaps that he himself couldn't accomplish in the past.
As if sensing his bullshit, the Crown Prince sat up and crossed his legs. He smiled.
"Did you know? Mother wanted to be in the same class as you and Miss Viola, but I protested against it. I went to the Headmaster, and he agreed to my request under one condition."
A cold feeling settled in the base of Leo's spine.
"…he gets to decide which class he puts me under." The Crown Prince sighed. "I had expected him to put me at least in the middle ranks, but guess what he did? He actually put me in the least performing class!"
The unspoken words ring loud in the air like a resounding bell:
What a coincidence must it be, both of them thought, to be put in the same class as her.
"But you have Sir Vincent, don't you?" Leo lowered his voice, turning his back on the prince. He began adjusting his windows, but in reality, he was checking if there was anyone else listening in from the outside. "There's no need to worry about anyone, especially you got the royal guards with you."
"About that," the Crown Prince whispered back. "Why else did you think I had him stay outside?"
***
Looking back to that conversation, Leo had half a mind to tell Vincent that the Crown Prince was beginning to doubt his loyalty.
On their way back to the dorms, fresh from confrontation and having cemented Viola and Rosanna's newfound 'friendship', Leo sought an opportunity to ask the Royal Guard something. A few steps ahead of them, the girls chattered away, lost in their world.
Leo and Vincent stayed a few steps behind, careful not to impose on their respective charges. They were shadows through and through, and perhaps this was also why Leo preferred the knight's company more than His Highness the Crown Prince.
"So," he began, "Since when did you and Miss Castus have gotten so close?"
"His Highness assigned me to keep an eye on her." The knight didn't even bother to spare Leo a glance.
Outside, the sun had already begun to set, signaling the end of classes and the start of preparations for dinner. Those who lived in the dorms should have at least an hour before they're summoned to the mess hall again, and by extension, meet everyone who saw what happened earlier.
"And how was it so far?"
"It was….interesting," Vincent replied curtly. "I certainly hadn't expected a disaster at this scale."
Disaster, he called it. To Leo, it was a nightmare almost repeating itself.
"Sir Vincent," Leo threaded carefully, "I do apologize for my behavior earlier. You see, Miss Viola and I weren't on good terms, and when I found out what happened—"
"You've been terribly rude to Miss Rosanna." Vincent cut in. "That's not an appropriate behavior for close friends."
'Ah,' Leo thought. 'So he's onto me as well.'
"Accept my apology," Leo offered, "and I'll overlook the fact that you let His Highness' betrothed almost be humiliated in front of that many people."
At that, Vincent stopped in his tracks to take off his glasses — revealing wolfish eyes that were every bit as sharp and predatory as their owner. This was exactly why Vincent and Leo got along so well: they shared the same drive to fulfill their duty, and at the same time, were willing to do anything if it means they can achieve their personal goals.
Vincent may not know it yet, but Leo already knows what drives this little knight to keep his post.
"What do you want." Vincent seethed.
Leo offered him a small smile.
"I need the names of the nobles who harrassed my lady," he said, meeting his gaze. "I need to make sure that this doesn't happen again."
"No. You don't fight harassment with another harassment."
"That's very noble of you, sir," Leo said, with a note of sincerity. In front of them, his lady Viola and Rosanna Castus laughed over earlier's incident like it didn't particularly concern them. Leo put his hands in his pockets.
"Now say that again without lying through your teeth," Leo grinned, "And perhaps I'll believe you a bit more."
The Crown Prince had always suspected that something was off with his most trusted knight, who liked to act timid when it suited him. Luckily for Leo, he had several lifetimes of meeting the same person — and he knew beforehand that the Crown Prince's suspicions were unfounded.
It was only tragic that the Crown Prince believed Rosanna over his most loyal knight...and Vincent paid dearly for it. Now, in a cruel twist of fate, he has to guard the same person who led to his downfall many lifetimes ago.
"We can't interfere," Vincent finally conceded, "The leader was Isabelle Kolm, daughter of the Earl of Frausia. They're related to one of the Academy's executive boards—"
"You can't interfere," Leo corrected. "But I can."
Vincent shook his head. "We should just ask help from the Crown Prince—"
"You know he can't be bothered with these things. Tell me, when was the last time he's gone ahead and done something for Miss Viola?"
Vincent stayed silent. Leo could imagine a thousand ways the boy was running through his list of duties — enabling a stupid butler wasn't one of them.
Unknown to Leo, the knight was actually looking at Rosanna Castus, who smiled at Viola in her stained dress.
Vincent sighed.
"Whatever the prince does is none of my concern," he whispered. "I have ordered, I ought to follow them. Unless someone died and made you the Crown Prince?"
Leo only scoffed at the tasteless joke, already expecting the response.
"Whatever. If I were the Crown Prince, I wouldn't idly stand by and let anyone humiliate my betrothed."
"But you're not," Vincent supplied.
"But I'm not." Leo agreed with a note of finality.
***
Later at night, he finds a note slid inside his door, containing the list of names as he asked.